Editor's File: Parents can't keep skipping school

Sunday

Oct 30, 2011 at 12:01 AM

Once upon a time almost everywhere in America, open house at the public school meant classrooms filled with parents and grandparents eager to meet Miss Jones and Mr. Smith, the women and men who enjoyed the unwavering support of a taxpaying public who revered and supported them.

Once upon a time almost everywhere in America, open house at the public school meant classrooms filled with parents and grandparents eager to meet Miss Jones and Mr. Smith, the women and men who enjoyed the unwavering support of a taxpaying public who revered and supported them.

Those days are gone.

At a recent open house at New Bedford's Roosevelt Middle School, only 26 percent of the parents bothered to show up, says eighth-grade social studies teacher Charles Dupre.

He was one of two teachers who served on a panel Thursday night at the "Building Better Schools" education forum this newspaper organized as an outgrowth of nearly a year's worth of reporting about the many challenges facing the city's public schools.

His statistics on parental attendance were specific to Roosevelt, but at many public schools in cities, suburbs and rural communities, the story isn't much different.

Taking part in the education of our children and ensuring that they are ready and willing to get every scrap of good out of their time in the classroom are no longer universal values.

We spend more time talking about cutting education spending than we do about getting the best from every dollar we spend. That is true even in a city like New Bedford, where every dollar we spend to operate the schools comes from the state, not from our own pockets. And where we kick in a dime for every 90 cents the state puts up to build a new school.

The parental attendance numbers reflect something darker and deeper than the old sop about parents leading busy lives. What they reflect is that a lot of us no longer believe in the power of education to transform our lives, and on its relationship to prosperity, happiness and the common good.

If we want to understand why our schools aren't as good as they should be, why so many kids finish 12 or 13 years of public education clearly lacking in knowledge and know-how, we must start with the grownups — the parents, the taxpayers, the educators. All of us.

Dr. Dana Mohler-Faria, the president of Bridgewater State University and one of the city's greatest benefactors and best friends, admits that he is "very concerned" about the state of education across the country.

Because his college has ties to schools around the world, he travels widely and thinks he knows why even the students of many Third World countries — whose overcrowded schools lack desks and chairs, never mind the latest textbooks and computers — are outperforming American schoolchildren. The people who live in those lands might be poor, but "they have a clear understanding that education is their pathway out of poverty."

Want to know why New Bedford High School students underperform not only the state average but almost all other Gateway City schools on the annual MCAS exams?

Students on average miss more than five weeks of school a year.

Five weeks.

How does that happen?

To be sure, an educational experience that was more challenging and more engaging no doubt would lift attendance. However, the truth is that too many parents just don't care enough to make sure their children are getting up, going to school, doing their homework and getting to bed early enough so that they have something to offer when they walk through the doors at the high school.

About 100 people attended one of the best forums on education I have heard in a very long time. Teachers spoke from the heart about education equality and fairness, about recommitting ourselves to our children, about what Gomes School kindergarten teacher Jennifer Clune calls "rebuilding our schools from the foundation up."

There was a leading businessman who has made it his passion to travel the country looking for school turnaround stories that he could share with educators here. A principal from North Carolina flew all the way up here to tell us, in part, what happens when we suspend half of the students at the high school as we do in New Bedford with our ninth-graders. He knows because he faced the same thing in the district where he works.

"If students are not in school, are suspended, they're breaking into people's houses," he said.

Does that sound familiar, New Bedford?

Of those at Thursday's forum, there were most of the New Bedford School Committee and at least two challengers, both candidates for mayor, School Superintendent Mary Louise Francis, a number of teachers, and members of the Education Roundtable, a citizens group working for more than a year on improving public education in New Bedford.

In other words, the choir was there, but the congregation was mostly missing.

Bob Unger is the editor associate publisher of The Standard-Times and SouthCoastToday.com. He can be reached by email at runger@s-t.com or by phone at 508-979-4430.

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